


Powers of Ten

by Veresiine



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 17:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20839163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veresiine/pseuds/Veresiine
Summary: All OCs, all the time. Full of headcanon rather than established and well-researched lore.Characters mourn their parents at 1, 10, and 100 years after their deaths, and reflect on their memories, grief, and their cultures' rituals and perceptions of death.100 years - Eresiine - DraeneiThe other two chapters will not be finished, as I lost my drafts to computer issues and don't have the heart to start again.





	Powers of Ten

Eresiine pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders with one hand as she walked through the abandoned and ruined halls of Auchindoun. Though she hadn't spent much time in Auchindoun before the fall, she had visited her destination before, and felt confident she could find it again.

  
Though she couldn't see the few remaining spirits that walked the halls without the clear lens of ritual, she could feel their presence from time to time.

  
She knew the spirit she had come to visit was no longer here, lost to the evils that plagued this once sacred place, but she could still take comfort in rite and ritual. Ordinary religion was still religion, after all, even if the extraordinary was closed to her.

  
In years past, she would have escorted by a soulpriest, but too few remained now, and she wasn't sure she wanted anyone to see this. But she was an Anchorite herself, and though tradition would _suggest_ she be escorted, she could bend the rules slightly.

  
Some might have objected, 'but she is Aldor, not Auchenai!", but Eresiine had lived and worked with Onoras. She knew what she was doing. She was still a priest, and had been a priest in the ages when Aldor and Auchenai were one.

  
She had asked Onoras for the materials for this ritual. He'd looked at her almost with pity, but he'd gathered up the ingredients anyway. They both knew what she was here for. "Tell him I said hi," he'd said, though they both knew that wasn't an option.

  
Eresiine took a few steadying breaths. She held her staff in one hand, lighting the way in front of her. The ritual components were in a pouch on her belt, and her other hand, no longer on her shawl, was free to trail along the walls.

  
She tried to push back any lingering anxiety at hearing her hoofsteps echo down the deserted halls. The only light came from the faint glow of her staff. She closed her eyes for a half second in concentration to channel more mana into it, increasing its glow.

  
She was almost there. If she remembered correctly, from here, it was just two lefts and then a right in quick succession.

  
There. The markings on that door looked correct. It seemed there was no new damage to it since she visited last.

  
Once inside, she placed her staff in one of the torch holders on the wall, closed her eyes, and stretched out her arms. She breathed in deeply, focused on the feeling of Light within her and around her rather than the musty yet sharp air. Once she felt immersed in the Light, she shifted her focus to the Void, feeling the contrast between the two and trying to walk the line of clarity between them that would allow her to commune with and pay respects to the dead. She was Aldor, not Auchenai, but she was her mother's daughter, and such ritual came easier to her than it did most other priests who primarily devoted themselves to the Light.

  
When she felt sufficiently ready, she dimmed the glow of her staff and muttered an incantation to light the brazier in the middle of the room. She was her mother's daughter, true, but that was the extent of her mastery of the arcane.

  
Doubt crept into her mind. Did she really want to call upon the souls when she knew the one she bore a message for wasn't there? But this was ritual; this was how respects were paid to the dead. It didn't matter if he was there or not. The other spirits could hear her, and the ones not consumed by madness might be reassured by a living draenei walking the halls and paying her respects to the deceased even if it wasn't to them.

  
Sometimes, Eresiine wished she could see them, but she felt their presence, and that was enough. While she could call upon the Void in ritual, she was 'blinded by the Light', and some things were forever closed to her because of her chosen path of devotion.

  
She began to recite the ritual prayer. She had memorized it before she came; it was disrespectful to read from a paper here unless one was an acolyte. Eresiine wasn't, and hadn't been for over two thousand years.

  
Once that was done, she threw the seeds from her belt pouch into the brazier. They crackled and erupted in flame. Blue smoke billowed out in large amounts at first; Eresiine let it accumulate and settle before waving it away from her face, smoothing it into a canvas for the spirits to manifest on.

  
After a short pause, she began to speak.

  
"Hello, father." He wasn't there, he couldn't reply, but she had to talk. "I'm sorry I haven't come to visit in so long. But oh, the stories I have to tell!" Eresiine smiled. "Did you know that, on Azeroth, they have special days for mothers and fathers? My friends all worked together to give me a wonderful celebration for this 'mother's day'. If only they could cooperate like that all the time! But father's day comes after that, and it got me thinking of you again." She swallowed hard. "It's been nearly a hundred years, in Draenor's time, so... I suppose this is a milestone." Eresiine felt her shoulders and tail droop, but she forced another smile as a pleasant memory floated to the surface. "You'd always get so irritated whenever you had to recalibrate your devices each time we changed planets. I never thought it concerned me, as a priest with little mathematical skill, uninterested in the nitty-gritty workings of things, but I think I understand your frustration now.

  
"I know Draenor -- Outland -- doesn't really have seasons anymore, but I keep track anyway. And Azeroth is home, too, now... oh! And there is another Draenor, one on a different timeline. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt." And her heart and her soul; tears formed in her eyes as she recalled all that had happened there. "So I keep track of that too, now." Should she mention her mothe -- Teariina? "AND we went to Argus. It's so much to keep track of, four worlds, all with their own cycles." Even if Outland's cycle was only in her memory, and Argus's seasonal cycles had stopped long before she was born.

  
"I suppose you want to hear more about Argus, right? You'd listen just as rapt as I did when mother talked about it. Oh, and I think you owe Aeliene a round of drinks. She wasn't lying; they *did* have 3D broadcasts for Jed'hin tournaments." Aeliene on the other Draenor had been Sargerei; Eresiine found it difficult not to let that affect her memory of the late artificer.

  
"By the time we got there, it was all so... broken and sad." Eresiine looked around. "Like here. But we are always so busy with war, we have so little time to repair our holy places. Even if some things can never be replaced. Like you." Eresiine clenched her firsts." I still think about it. Not every day anymore, or even every week, but often enough. If I hadn't cloistered myself inside the temple so much, if I hadn't spent more time ministering to the local clan of orcs than I did visiting my own family, if I'd been a better daughter instead of just a dutiful Anchorite... maybe I would have been closer when it happened. Maybe I would have gotten there in time to heal you, to save you. Or at least to hear your last words.

  
"I know you'd tell me it's not my fault. That I'm responsible for my actions, not for yours, and you made your own decisions and suffered the consequences. You died doing what you loved. Danger is a part of the hunt." But it had never stopped him and it hadn't stopped her, either.

  
"We talked about this, didn't we? The last time we... we actually talked." Two years before the genocide began, she had gone on a pilgrimmage. One of the older soulpriests had mediated their talk; Eresiine hadn't admitted her lingering guilt until then, as she didn't have the heart to appear emotionally fragile or weak before any of the priests younger than her. "It still hurts, though. Even in the face of so much unnatural tragedy, it's a natural, accidental death that haunts me the most these days." Except Karabor, of course, but she wasn't talking about Karabor, she couldn't _think_ about Karabor, but it wasn't the death there that hurt her so much as her own violation of her principles, values, and vows in a panicked and selfish attempt to save her life after she'd foolishly put it in danger with naivete she should have been too old to fall prey to.

  
"I wonder if it's getting to me now because I know you're... you're really gone." He wasn't just passed on to live in Auchindoun. His spirit had been destroyed. Eresiine didn't know if it was Illidan or her own people gone mad, but... he was gone. "And I got to see Mom again... sort of... but I'll never see you again." She sniffled. "I miss you, dad." She couldn't even visit him on the other Draenor; he'd suffered the same fate there, but at the hand of Teron'gor. It was too cruel to have this happen twice. "I've had humans tell me that they wished they'd had a hundred years to spend with their loved ones before losing them, then they'd learn everything they could and it would be fulfilling, but... Dad, you were in my life for nearly three _thousand_ years and there's still so much I had to learn from you. And I never got the chance. Because..." Because she'd been at the temple. She thought she'd always have time. Later. But suffering people had needed her then and to help them she needed peace and solitude to clear her mind and recharge. "... Onoras says to say hi. He misses you, too." Onoras had been at his side all those centuries. But Onoras hadn't talked much about it. He didn't talk much about his feelings unless he was drunk, and they'd always had more pressing matters at hand. The end of the world, for instance. "You just... you know how he is about spiritual matters." Eresiine had to admit, it was amusing in hindsight. Onoras was an Auchenai artificer but he turned up his nose at anything that couldn't be explained through science, yet she was his best friend and a priest with little knack for math, physics, or engineering. "He wouldn't set hoof in these halls unless there was something that needed delicate repairs.

  
"But you've heard me gripe about him so many times. Neither of us will ever change. And that's a good thing. He is who he is meant to be and I am..." Was she who she was meant to be? The version of herself that had lived on the other Draenor put that into question. Eresiine swallowed. "I am the product of all my decisions up until now." That was fair, though it didn't say much. She forced a grin. "And I inherited your stubborn streak."

  
The smoke was staring to clear. Time was fading.

  
Eresiine knew, of course, that he wasn't there anymore, so it wouldn't matter, but she didn't wish to disrespect tradition and ritual. She should wrap it up. It wasn't safe to linger in the halls too long. The Light would guide her and protect her and woe betide whoever attacked a holy woman in the middle of a peaceful ritual, but Onoras and the paladins would worry.

  
"But no matter how stubborn we are, things must change and disappear to make room for the new. Just know that I'll treasure your memory in my heart forever. Until we meet again, dioniss aca." Eresiine bowed her head and was about to recite the prayer to formally dismiss the spirits when she felt a ghostly touch at the center of her crest. She looked up, but she could see nothing there through the fading smoke.

  
"Before Illidan came --" The voice was barely audible and not familiar, but Eresiine dropped to one knee to honor the spirit. "-- Your father told me to tell you, 'little doe, you've grown so strong, so brave, so graceful'." The spirit changed his voice to mimic her father's, but Eresiine could still hear the difference. Her father had always said 'little doe' jokingly; she had been taller than him by age fifteen, but she suspected the messenger spirit didn't know this. It hurt, but it was a good hurt. " 'Your mother hand I are always watching over you, no matter where we are. We all walk different paths, but we walk together'." The spirit paused, then resumed his normal voice. "Go in peace, priest. May the Light of the Naaru guide your path."


End file.
